The Green Hornet is a pretty surprising movie for a variety of reasons, all in unexpectedly enjoyable ways. To begin with, I had never heard of The Green Hornet before hearing of this film. The Green Lantern, sure, but… Hornet? New to me. Here’s another surprising tidbit of news: prominent Taiwanese pop star Jay Chou (Kato) co-stars in this film alongside Seth Rogen (Britt Reid). And he does a great job. To those of you unversed in Asian pop music, Jay Chou is one of Asia’s biggest names. He has a long and very accomplished career backing him up, and although I honestly do not know if any acting is on his resume, that doesn’t really matter because Jay Chou does a fine job with a great character. By the way, yes, his English is perfectly understandable, and I do also have to add that he looks great in a suit. (Don’t worry, that has no effect upon the objectivity of this review.)

An interesting choice of actors

The Green Hornet takes a few superhero related ideas that have been done before, i.e. powerless normal human being decides he wants to try his hand at being a hero, and rich kid with a lot of money and thus powerful technology uses all this to fight the bad guys. However, The Green Hornet takes those ideas and gives them a very comedic and light hearted spin. One liners are all over the place in this film and for the most part they’re very funny. The villain, Chudnovsky (otherwise known as BLOODnovsky!), is played by Christopher Waltz, villain of Quentin Tarantino’s film Inglorious Basterds, and after hearing that fact you should already know that yes, the villain is awesome. A hilarious badass with image issues and a double barrel gun – Waltz’s charm and unique touch as a villain is all over this character and the film definitely would not be what it is without him. Additionally, even Cameron Diaz as the somewhat unconventional love interest does a great job. Overall, this film bucks the traditions followed by most superhero movies with awesome results.

An interesting gun

Just to sum up, if any of you reading this couldn’t tell by now I really enjoyed the movie. It greatly surpassed my expectations and although it is by no means perfect – for example, there are a few scenes between Britt and Kato that drag a bit despite the comedic sparks between the pair, and which might be spoiler-ish to disclose here – I highly recommend it. For those of you interested in the roles of Asians in mainstream Hollywood (aka those of you who probably shunned The Last Airbender), I am sure you’ll find a lot to applaud in The Green Hornet as the thoroughly-Asian Kato gets a lot of great scenes and lines that rival those of the film’s star Britt Reid himself. Overall, go give The Green Hornet a chance, and you may find yourself pleasantly surprised.

An interesting scene

8.6

Quoted by Sawazz

MWP: 7.7

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